The last post ended with me telling you that the image, which hangs on my bedroom wall, works me 24/7. I see her from my bed and often recline there during the day to read and often end up gazing at the painting. That huge female feels potent.

Our teacher for DEEP  suggests that we have a dialogue with our image and one afternoon I suddenly have to do that. I grab my journal and start writing by asking the woman this question: Who are you? What are you?

She replies: I am old beyond measure and vast beyond acknowledgment. Right here in this painting, you have given me form but really I am energy and invisible. You humans seem to have a need to make many truths visible, identifiable, manageable…but my sort of ceaseless and omnipresent existence is beyond your control and influences everything you do, regardless of your awareness. You’ll all be a lot happier when you accept that.”

Suddenly I hear these words: The hands, the hands, the hands…We humans are a force of nature equal to typhoons, earthquakes, blizzards and droughts. No other creature on the surface of the globe wreaks havoc on the scale we do. Wow, I think, this is a new slant on an old rant. The painting continues to inform me: You are literally the lightning strike, the tornado, the meteor crashing to earth, the tsunami, All the other creatures do their best to avoid you…BUT/AND you are the only force of nature that has imagination and consciousness. You can choose how to wield your power and I keep wondering why you keep choosing to wreak havoc rather than create heaven.

Here in my painting I see/hear the words: tidal wisdom. That term flowed out of my pencil as I wrote. I was told by my writing hand that “tidal wisdom” means accepting this truth:  living is a process of constant give and take where we flourish with an ethics of reciprocity, where we appreciate and “dance with” ebb and flow, loss and gain, birth and death, dark and light.

The painting asks me “How does power feel in that context?”

I answer: Power feels like me – the truth of me. My life matters. My life, your life, all lives are interconnected and supported by the everything all around us – healthy environment, good friends, responsive institutions, the memories of our ancestors. Our hands connected to our minds connected to our hearts act differently from those of embittered, alienated souls.

So here is my HANDCESTOR as she develops. Remember all those eagles flying around me in the forest? Look who shows up in the painting, partly because of the synchronistic arrival of a photo in my email last week: The healing eagle named Freedom and her healing human, a man whose name I don’t know.